Fiber Networking, gear questions

Hi all...

Some of you know i've gotten a new job that involves configuring wan and fiber Ethernet services for our customers. The one major provider we work with installs the same devices at every location... so we tend to use them at every location.
www.telco.com/int/index/en/prodbyname/prod/81

Myself, and most all the other engineers do NOT like these. We have regular problems with them, and they don't seem to be getting any better with firmware updates. I'll save the on-call horror stories for another post...

Where we can we just leave them off, and jack the fiber directly into the gear.. but we can't do this everywhere.

Can anyone suggest any other equipment that we might be able to use in place of these?

It looks like it's basically a "we don't trust what's plugged on either end so we want our own monitoring box" box that happens to do a bit of QOS and bandwith shaping as well. If your business doesn't actually depend on these features I'd be tempted to leave them off too

Really we just need the transceiver, most people want an copper hand off not fiber, so these get put in.

We really don't care about almost any of the features, and i'm sure whatever we find to replace this will have some of them...

Then it looks like what we here call a SPOF (single point of failure). Why have a separate box in-line with your incoming feed when the router/switch can do the media conversion itself? It's just another power supply, mains connection, circuit board, bit of microcode etc to potentially go wrong

Sounds like you just need a plain old media converter... look at transition networks.

Hi all...

Some of you know i've gotten a new job that involves configuring wan and fiber Ethernet services for our customers. The one major provider we work with installs the same devices at every location... so we tend to use them at every location.
www.telco.com/int/index/en/prodbyname/prod/81

Myself, and most all the other engineers do NOT like these. We have regular problems with them, and they don't seem to be getting any better with firmware updates. I'll save the on-call horror stories for another post...

Where we can we just leave them off, and jack the fiber directly into the gear.. but we can't do this everywhere.

Can anyone suggest any other equipment that we might be able to use in place of these?

Then it looks like what we here call a SPOF (single point of failure). Why have a separate box in-line with your incoming feed when the router/switch can do the media conversion itself? It's just another power supply, mains connection, circuit board, bit of microcode etc to potentially go wrong

First and foremost its the demarc. Thats where the ISP turns it over to "us" (the customers). If there is ever a problem you stick a laptop on the end.. and volia insta test...

Second, you would be shocked how many people will not accept a fiber hand off, if there is even a HINT at there being a copper solution available.